In a Word
by RenaRoo
Summary: [Final Crisis Aftermath] Cassandra has a word for her father but she isn't ready to share it.


anonymous prompted: Cass reaction to Bruce's "death" in final crisis

This was so cruel. I loved it. ANGSTY CASS PROMPTS ARE MY JAM. and by that I mean I cry to them a lot. Also I took this opportunity to fix Battle for the Cowl: The Network because I still hate it haha

Batman and related properties © DC Comics  
story © RenaRoo

 **In a Word**

Letting Dick help with the Network was meant to make things better. It was meant for brother and sister to build upon their father's legacy, together. Like he would have wanted, if he had wanted a maintained legacy at all.

(It was supposed to be hers. She wanted it. He let her train for it. Barbara helped her learn for it. Alfred taught her to read for it. But Dick hadn't wanted it, never wanted it, grown past it. He was grieving. So was Cass. Maybe _neither_ of them had really wanted it.

Not like this.)

But with their father's return, then his death again, with a cape draped over Superman's arms as he returned it to their home, cooperation was becoming less and less of a thing within the Manor.

"Can you check on Tim while I work on this?" Dick asked too harshly to be a real question.

He was frustrated. He didn't agree with her choices.

Cassandra narrowed her eyes. Tim was burned, badly, but Dick knew just as well as Cass did that he wouldn't have responded to anyone but Alfred tending the wounds. Tim hadn't been active outside of his room in days.

"You want to take Spoiler off the list," Cass accused plainly. "You... don't like her."

"I like Stephanie," Dick said clearly, glaring back at Cass. "She's not good for this team you have lined up."

"She was... _fine_ when I lined up first," Cass snapped. "You took off... other heroes her age."

"We are _not_ forming a Teen Titans: Gotham Chapter," Dick shot back, throwing a hand toward the screen. "You want a Network to help carry out the job Batman filled in Gotham, but you want to do it with inexperienced, unproven talent that you know personally."

"You took off _Huntress,"_ Cass snapped. "She was... those things. Same with. Langstrom."

"The thing you want the Network to do? We need them fully available any time they're needed," Dick responded. "Huntress is on Babs' Birds and is not full-time in Gotham anymore regardless. Langstrom has little interest in vigilantism, his services are more in assistance to us than they are personally seeking out justice-"

Cass threw up her arms. "He _came to me!"_

"It was a gesture!" Dick growled. "Look, Cass, just let me work with this again, then you can make all the commentary you want. We'll compare notes, meet in the middle-"

She had heard more than enough, though. With a final flail of her arms, Cassandra tore toward the stairs and up to the Manor. She could feel hot, angry tears racing down her face.

It wasn't necessarily that anything Dick was saying was wrong. It made sense to her, even if she didn't want it to. It was just that this wasn't _his._ It was hers. She was starting the Network for Bruce on her own. It was what she had to give him back.

And even if she had, it wouldn't have been enough.

In her own room - hardly decorated, hardly used - she shut the door and collapsed into a heap on the floor. She curled into her knees and let out a frustrated scream.

Dick wasn't acting himself. Tim wasn't coming out of his room. Damian was still a mystery to her. And Alfred...

Well, Alfred didn't take long to come by her door, enter as silently as ever, and drop to his knees on the floor by her.

He didn't say anything - not even about her breaking rules by being upstairs in her suit - but he didn't have to. Cass latched onto him, burying her face in his shoulders and letting out ugly sobs. She didn't even have to tell him why she was upset.

It wouldn't have mattered, at the end of the day they were all really upset over the same thing.

Bruce Wayne was dead. And maybe Batman was, too.

* * *

Three days after Batman was buried and any second not spent on the streets, Cassandra spent curled around her pillows on a too stiff bed in the Manor.

She couldn't sleep - she'd sleep like the dead rested against a gargoyle somewhere downtown between catastrophes, but never at home, during the day, when for them it would have been normal.

Instead she meandered. She listlessly walked the halls.

Then she's curl around the phone Bruce bought her and listen again and again to messages.

"Cass, we could use you."

"Cass, we've not talked in months, but I know you're hurting right now."

"Cass, I don't know if they told you but... I'm back."

"Cass, where are you?"

"Cass, I miss you."

"Cass, I'm _so_ sorry."

She deleted them one by one. Sometimes they were only halfway through, sometimes they got to finish. It didn't matter ultimately. Every time she did it, she honestly couldn't make herself remembered who had called and who didn't.

Even when she paid attention with all her might, Cassandra wasn't able to keep the memory of the messages.

They all hurt just as much. They all were just as useless as the other.

She emptied her phone every day, until she got to the last message.

Then she'd listen to it again.

"Cassie," his voice said, not devoid of warmth but in that tone that meant they had business. "I've been thinking of putting a team back together. I know you've only been a part of one team before, I know that it was a challenge to you, that it was just a mission. But I have seen what having your own team can do for our kind. I've seen the differences teams have made for Dick and Tim. I think this can work. We'll talk about it. We'll have lunch."

She buried her face further into her mattress every time she heard it.

He had been talking about the Outsiders.

It was her team, something she had never truly had before. And they had it together.

Except he was gone, and the Outsiders were no more.

The Network, perhaps, could have been her team. But it wasn't. It wasn't anything.

Dick stopped working on it when Gotham got too bad, and Cass... Cassandra didn't know if there was even anything to do with it anymore.

* * *

Arkham was never reliable for containment, but the escapes swept the city like a plague.

Somehow they knew - all of them knew that there wasn't a Batman to answer the call of the signal. And with that knowledge the vast majority of them ran rampant like they never had before.

The only ones without fear in Gotham were the criminal. And that went against everything Batman had ever told her.

Twenty hours straight and despite absolutely everyone being out and working their hardest that night, Cassandra had yet to run into a single other Bat.

If she was honest with herself, though, that was at least partially by design.

That was why, as she nearly ducked too late in her weariness as another would-be East End kingpin shot out, it took Cassandra completely by surprise to have her target already pinned by his hands to the opposing brick wall.

Only a casual glance at the arrow sticking from him told Cassandra what she needed to know about who to thank for her rescue.

The Huntress stood atop the rooftop, waiting expectantly as Cassandra climbed her way up to her. She then looked Cass over a few times.

"When's the last time you slept?" Huntress demanded.

"No time," Cass muttered back. "Tell Oracle... thanks. But... I'm fine."

Huntress shook her head. "This isn't for Oracle. And this _isn't_ fine. Come over here."

Cautiously, Cassandra stepped forward, only to go stock still as Huntress - the battle hardened, fierce, deadly operative Barbara trusted more than almost any other in the field - wrapped her in a hard hug. It almost made Cass' heart stop.

"God, you guys are just kids," Huntress sighed.

She wanted to argue it, but Cass imagined there was an even bigger part of her that just wanted to keep that hug.

"C'mon," Huntress called, releasing Cass just enough to hold her by her shoulders. "Let's put some of these guys behind bars together. No one will hear from me where you are, if that's how you want it."

Cassandra nodded.

* * *

When Gotham was held together again by loose stitches and the fires were, for the most part, put out, there was yet another service.

This time it was only for them - for those who were grieving _Bruce Wayne_ and he alone.

It was simple, quaint, and involved all attending in civilian clothes. They were dressed in black, and there were tears.

Barbara looked beautiful as ever, most likely helped by the fact that it was the first time Cassandra had seen her in over a week. (By choice, which she knew probably hurt Barbara nearly as much as any verbal sparring they might have had in that time had Cass headed her calls).

When Stephanie left for Tim's side and when her brothers could handle no more, Cassandra remained seated at the front aisle, looking over the site where her father was supposed to remain.

She couldn't repeat a single word that Mr. Kent said or that Princess Diana recited, but Cassandra could count in her soul the number of times Barbara squeezed her hand - her oldest confidante and mentor never once leaving her side.

In the end, just as it had been in the beginning, Cassandra turned her face into Barbara's shoulder and cried and screamed when she needed.

Barbara didn't object, and once even ran her fingers through Cassandra's hair, kissed her head.

It was obvious that Barbara hurt, too, but like so many other times, she let Cassandra be wounded and comforted without the complication. And for that, Cassandra had no words.

By the time it was done, and Cassandra had gathered the strength, Barbara stood just behind her, let Cass cross the grounds to stand over the unmarked grave.

She had to say the one word she had been holding back from the very beginning, and it was the hardest one she had ever said.

Kneeling down, she kissed her fingers then touched the ground, feeling her heart ache.

"Goodbye."


End file.
